Article excerpt

THE music was loud and the beat pulsing in the ground-floor
restaurant in this quiet Central Asian capital. Out on the dance
floor, Turkmen women in short skirts moved to the rhythm, returning
only briefly to their tables for a drink.

The restaurant is a favorite of businessmen from neighboring
Iran, says a Turkmen official whose father runs a joint trading
company with Iran. Out from under the watch of the mullahs and
their zealous Islamic followers, the Iranians enjoy the atmosphere,
he reports.

The presence of Iranian merchants has come only with the
independence of this former Soviet Central Asian republic from its
former Russian masters in Moscow. The border with Iran lies a mere
25 miles from this capital, part of a 1,000-mile frontier
stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west to Afghanistan in the
east. But during the Soviet era, traffic across the border was
tightly controlled.

Now the Turkmen government, led by former Turkmen Communist
Party boss Saparmurat Niyazov, welcomes everyone from traders to
Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who visited here last year.

"There is no alternative to cooperation with Iran, economically
and culturally," President Niyazov, who went to Iran twice last
year alone, told a small group of Western reporters last month. "I
have very good relations with President Rafsanjani. I have met him
many times and I respect him greatly. His outlook is peaceful and
friendly."

This view is not shared by some Western governments, including
the United States, which privately chide the Turkmens for being
"naive" about Iranian intentions.

Turkmen officials believe this fear of Iran is exaggerated. "The
Iranians understand that for us, religion and politics are
separate," says First Deputy Foreign Minister Charnazar
Annaberdiev. "They don't talk religion here. Their main interest is
economic."

The Turkmen government is vigorously pursuing economic ties with
Iran, driven by the desire to free the country from dependence on
transportation and trade routes through Russia. A rail link between
Ashkhabad and the northern Iranian city of Meshed is being built,
scheduled for completion in 1995, which will give Turkmenistan
access to the Persian Gulf. They are negotiating construction of a
pipeline through Iran and Turkey to provide a new outlet to Europe
for Turkmenistan's gas production.

"They don't fear Iran," comments a Western diplomat here. "This
is not a fundamentalist country.... The Iranians are sending
religious organizers, but we don't see any effect. They are
building a lot of mosques, but we don't see people going to them."

This relatively benign view is not shared by all observers,
however. At least one well-informed Western source warns that the
Iranians have effectively organized an underground network of
Islamists that could ultimately threaten to take power in this
peaceful nation of 4 million. …